The most ambitious attempts to eliminate profits have taken the form of cooperation. Everywhere groups are planning how to carry on this or that kind of industry without the assistance of professional enterprisers. Farmers organize cooperative grain elevators, creameries, and threshing "rings"; merchants combine to purchase goods in larger quantities; while consumers pool their buying ability in order to deal directly with jobbers, wholesalers, or manufacturers. Does the elimination of the professional enterpriser eliminate profits? If the farmers of a certain community can manage a grain elevator so successfully as to show a residual element at the end of the year, they have earned a profit. Perhaps it is returned to them the next year in the form of increased price or of decreased storage charges, yet that does not alter the fact (1) that it is profits, and (2) that it arose as a result of their skill as enterprisers. They have eliminated the enterpriser without eliminating his reward. In other words, our group of farmers has assumed the risks of the business and is entitled to any residual element that may arise.